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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Y is for Yellow Brick Road

The Yellow Brick Road, or the road of yellow brick as it is actually referred to in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, is the path Dorothy Gale and her friends must take in order to reach the Emerald City where they each hope to find something - a brain, a heart, courage, and a way home.

When she finds herself transported to the Land of Oz, Dorothy Gale learns that she must follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City if she wants to reach her ultimate goal and return home. She has many adventures along the way - freeing the Scarecrow, helping the Tin Man, and befriending and encouraging the Cowardly Lion. They face flying monkeys, and Deadly Poppies, wolves and Winkie soldiers. In the end it's not the Wizard and his silk hearts or magic potions that help Dorothy and her friends find what they're looking for . . .

In many ways, the yellow brick road represents the archetypal journey - or quest - that the heroes of our favorite fairy tales must embark on in order to reach literary fulfillment. It's both a literal and metaphorical road in which the journey, rather than the destination, is what's important. The Wizard isn't able to return Dorothy to her home, but through the course of her quest along the yellow brick road, she learns that she had the ability within her all along. It's a journey of self discovery, like those we've seen in so many classic fairy tales, and will see in countless stories to come.

This post is part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. My theme (in case you didn't already guess) is Fairy Tales. Stay tuned for the rest of the alphabet, and if you'd like to check out the other participants, simply click here.

Still haven't seen Wicked. As a kid, those flying monkeys in the movie scared me. I realized, while reading your postings this month, that I probably never read these stories and fairy-tales to my boys when they were young because of my experiences watching them on film. Of course, now, we are all into sci-fi and Marvel comics films. Nothing scary there.

Ahh this movieis quite something and I have a little tidbit that brings the book together with the film. Frank Morgan played The Wizard in the movie and the costume designers and such were told to find an old jacket that looks somewhat regal but has seen better days and seems to be from an earlier time period. Well one of the people went searching and went to a clothing store selling second hand clothes and she found this perfect jacket that would fit mr. Morgan. She bought it and he wore it in the film. Frank L. Baum's widow was still alive at the time and would visit the set and noticed the jacket and said how her husband had a jacket similar to that one. Frank Morgan took the jacket off and look inside and on the inside was written "belonged to Frank L Baum". It was in Baum's own handwriting!